


Is this real?

by omgbellamy



Category: Atypical (TV 2017)
Genre: Casey and Izzie, Coming Out, Endgame, Enemies to Friends to Lovers, F/F, First Kiss, Forehead Touching, Friends to Lovers, Lesbian Character, Love Confessions, Post-Canon, cizzie, clayton prep, evan is a bean, minor evan/casey, soft hours, these two are gay af, track
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-10-06
Updated: 2018-10-06
Packaged: 2019-07-26 01:36:53
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,634
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16209938
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/omgbellamy/pseuds/omgbellamy
Summary: Set after 2x10. Izzie and Casey have a lot of feelings for each other, but Casey isn't ready to admit hers.After a while, the two come together, and the feelings rise to the surface.





	Is this real?

**Author's Note:**

> Hey guys! This is my first fic for these gays. They're both amazing, I can't wait to see what they do with cizzie in season 3. I hope Evan is not forgotten though. My boy deserves all the world. Enjoy!

She doesn’t have any big realisation. But Casey sort of just realises she feels something for Izzie. She’s watching a movie with Evan, and he’s cuddling her like he usually does, but she can’t focus. She can’t stop thinking about last night. The way she and Izzie held hands in her car, the way she’d told Izzie she was in love with Evan, then proceeded to hold her hand afterwards…

Fuck. Just fuck.

Casey loves Evan she does. And she knows he loves her too; he just finds it difficult to say the ‘l’ word. And its fine. Casey doesn’t expect much. She’s sixteen and he’s seventeen, so what’s much really? Casey loves her friends and her team at Clayton and her life, but Izzie’s the one part that confuses her.

She doesn’t know what it means. But Casey Gardener is no denier. She _knows_ in her soul she and Izzie aren’t just friends… but is it fleeting? Is it a crush?

Shit Shit Shit.

_“It’s just, sometimes a thing just feels, like…so right, you know?” Casey says into the darkness._

_She hears Izzie breathing beside her, the girl letting out a sigh. “Yeah…like you and Evan?”_

_Casey’s stomach drops. She doesn’t know whether it’s because Izzie is right or wrong. “Uh, Yeah,” she says._

_But she’s not thinking that when she presses ‘ignore’ on his call and when she holds Izzie’s hand._

She dodges Evan until Wednesday, when he shows up at Clayton after one of their track meets. The girls are all doing cooling down stretches when he shows up. She glances a moment at Izzie, who looks down when Evan approaches.

He comes over and swoops down to kiss her, but Casey dodges it swiftly, hugging his side instead.

Evan looks down at her confused. He kisses her head, and Casey closes her eyes. She feels so guilty. It’s hard to look him in the eyes, because she feels like she’s cheated. She and Izzie had held hands and almost kissed, and here Evan was being the sweetest, most oblivious boyfriend ever.

“Evan, hey!” Casey says with feigned excitement. “What – what, uh, are you doing here?”

Evan smiles at his girlfriend, pecking her lips once more. “I thought I’d surprise my girl.”

Casey momentarily freezes. Fuck.

_I just need my girl back._

_My girl._

Izzie…

She forces a smile, pecking his lips for good measure. “You’re sweet.”

“Yeah, I am. I was also thinking we could cash in that rain check tonight? My parents are gone.”  He smiles hopefully at her and Casey suddenly feels like she can’t breathe. She’d forgot about the text she’d sent to Evan before her birthday about redoing their first time. Oh, God.

“I wish I could, but Sam has a peer group thing tonight that includes the family,” Casey lies. She feels that horrible tightness in her stomach again: an obvious side effect of her guilty conscience.

Evan’s face falls, but he nods at her understandingly. “Ok, Case. At least let me take you home?”

Casey nods. She gets into his beat-up truck in the parking lot. She can feel the eyes of her teammates burning holes in her, but one pair in particular she doesn’t want to think about.

Casey breaks it off halfway through the summer.

It’s down to a number of things, really. Evan treats her well, he’s genuine and he’s a sweet guy who validates her most of the time, but sometimes it feels like they just don’t _get_ each other. They’d tried to make it work, but it felt like lately they were drifting further and further apart.

“I just think we’ve tried so fucking hard, but we’re just not moving forward,” she says to him. She takes a sip of her tea, and looks at him.

Evan looks down at his Nikes, but he nods. “I agree,” he says unexpectedly.

That gets Casey’s attention. “You…you do?”

“Yeah,” he says, “Things have been different since your birthday. I’m not exactly sure why, but I feel like with Clayton and us already living in separate towns that things are just getting harder, and we’re so busy recently. It probably would be better if we just…called it a day.”

Casey nods she sighs and leans against him. “I’m sorry, Evan. It sucks, but you know I…” He doesn’t let her finish.

Evan sighs, too. “Yeah. I know, Case. I love you too, goof.” She gives him a side hug, and he leaves with a wave.

And that’s that.

She doesn’t tell anyone about the breakup. Mom and Dad continually ask where Evan is, but Casey just gives one word answers or just says that he’s busy. Mom figures it out, but obviously she witnessed her and Izzie’s almost-kiss, so she has some insight that nobody else has.

“You broke up, didn’t you?”

Casey’s lying down flat on her bed, her feet in the air. She grunts at her mom, hoping that she gets the hint to leave. Of course, she doesn’t because Elsa is Elsa, and she can’t not be a nosy mom.

“Yeah,” Casey mutters.

“Oh, Casey. I’m sorry.”

Casey doesn’t say anything.

“Evan was such a lovely boy. He was good to you, and he was so good with Sam I just hope—”

“Mom.”

Elsa stops rambling. “Hm?”

“It was mutual. Things with us haven’t been the best recently.” Casey offers her mom an olive branch. It had been months, but the affair still reigned over their relationship. Things were still strained between them, but her mom was trying, so Casey figured she would too.

“Casey…I don’t want to assume or even ask to seem like I’m prying…but honey, is this about Izzie?”

Casey tenses.

Honestly, it wasn’t. Izzie sort of made Casey question a lot of things, but her issues with Evan existed before Izzie.

“No,” Casey snaps more defensively than she means to. Her mom doesn’t flinch in that mom-sort-of-way.

She just raises an eyebrow, but doesn’t say anything.

“Evan and I broke up for a bunch of reasons, not that you need to know,” Casey says, and then she sighs. “It was best for us both, mom. I know you liked him and so did Sam, but it’s easier like this.”

“Oh honey, it’s ok. I know. I’m proud that you did what was best for you and didn’t’…well you didn’t hurt anyone in the process like I did.”

Casey flinches. The reminder of the affair is still painful. Because the infidelity had torn their family apart and somehow brought them back together, but it was still a sore subject for Casey since she was the one who discovered it.

“Thanks, mom.”

Elsa smiles at her daughter. She wants to hug her, but they still have a while to go before their relationship is fixed, so Casey smiles back as a peace offering.

Casey channels all of her energy into track’s summer club. She eats, sleeps and breathes track. Coach remarks how fast she’s gotten, since now she’s apparently breaking a lot of Izzie’s records. She competes in a friendly manner with her, no malice like when they’d first met.

Nate gives her dirty looks when he sees her, but Casey ignores it. Everybody at Clayton knew about he and Izzie’s breakup, but nobody in their friend group dared to ask either of them about it. Casey was glad for that; she’d had enough drama at her old school.

She avoids Izzie one to one because every time she sees her conflicting feelings swirl up in her stomach. She hasn’t exactly figured out what to do about these feelings yet.

She gets home from yet another track meet, feet burning and looking sweaty as hell. Casey flops down on her bed, face first. She dumps her phone down beside her, not willing herself to read through the ongoing notifications from the team WhatsApp chat. The dinging continues, but Casey blatantly ignores it. She’s not in the mood for people today, and it’s only noon.

Sam barges in with Edison in his hands.

“Casey!”

Casey ignores her brother.

“Casey – I know you can hear me! You’re not in an ice age!”

Casey snorts at that.

“Casey,” Paige tuts.

Casey rolls her eyes into the pillow. She finds Sam’s girlfriend very, very annoying, but she knows her peppiness is perfect for him.

Casey grunts.

“We put a top hat on Edison,” Paige beams.

Casey snorts. “You did not,” she mutters.

Paige, being the alien she is, somehow hears her. “We did too. Look!”

 

“She’s telling the truth, Casey. We solemnly swear!” Sam declares.

Casey gives an exaggerated sigh, then rolls onto her back. She turns and sure enough, Edison wriggles in the palm of Sam’s hand wearing a tiny top hat.

Casey gasps and smirks. “Well I’ll be damned,” she says, trying to hold back a laugh.

Paige frowns momentarily.

“Sorry, you nun.”

Paige flips back her ponytail. “I’ll allow it this time,” she says formally.

A thought occurs to Casey then.

“Wait…but _why_ does Edison have on a top hat?” Casey asks, titling her head and looking at the tortoise. “Sam would never do that to Edison.”

“I didn’t want to, but Mom said you’re sad, so I thought you’d receive some humour from it. It was Paige’s idea.”

Casey smiles. Her older brother is oblivious to many things because of his condition, but sometimes he’s just the sweetest person ever.

Casey jumps up. “Thanks, Sam. Paige.” She runs over to bear-hug him. Paige retrieves Edison quickly, rescuing him from the commotion.

“Personal space, personal space! You’re inside of my igloo zone!” Sam yelps. Casey laughs. She’s unusually tall for a girl, so she towers over Sam.

“Oh no!” Casey says sarcastically. “Whatever will you do?”

Sam shrugs her off. “Nothing.” And with that, he and Paige leave her room.

She focused on track. She lives and breathes it. She gets faster, and she competes with Izzy, but they both stay away from each other mostly. Honestly, Casey isn’t ready to deal with her mountain of complicated feelings; she’s still processing her breakup with Evan, anyway.

Nobody comments on her habits. She mostly just makes excuses when the girls ask her to hangout, and Nate sometimes looks at her like he knows something. He’d jokingly said she and Izzie would fall in love. Now Casey doesn’t think that’s so crazy…

But fuck. She’s sixteen. Has she – was she – in love with Evan? She thinks so. They had fun. He treated her right, kissed her nicely, was nice enough to her family. But it’s like Izzie said: sometimes it didn’t feel all the way _right_ with him. Like something was missing. They’d been growing a part for a while probably since Casey went to Clayton, they just hadn’t let it matter until now.

But sooner or later, she has to deal with it.

And its sooner rather than later when she does.

Casey is at her locker. It’s lunchtime, and she’s just getting out her lunch when someone taps her shoulder.

“Newton.”

Casey freezes.

She turns slowly, feeling her heart thump with her as she does. Oh God.

“Hey, Izzie.”

“Where the hell have you been?” Izzie demands. “You’ve been absent for the past week. Everyone’s been wondering why you’re not sitting with us.”

“I’ve been going through some things,” Casey says, not entirely lying. She avoids those brown eyes, because she knows she’ll say something she regrets if she does.

Izzie raises an eyebrow, crossing her arms. “Yeah? Well you could’ve talked to us – talked to me.”

Casey sighs, running her free hand through her hair. She’s really not in the right mind set to deal with this now. She hoped she had at least a few more weeks before she would be confronted by Izzie. But Izzie’s upfront and she’s a firecracker. If she has something to say, she’ll say it to you, no matter. Casey loves and envies that about her.

“Sorry. I didn’t want to burden you,” she says.

Izzie scoffs. She puts both hands on Casey’s shoulders. “Are you kidding me? You wouldn’t be burdening me at all, you’re my best girl.” She shakes Casey as if she’s the biggest moron, and frankly, Casey feels like that now.

But she also feels on edge because they’re apparently not addressing the elephant in the room, and fuck that if anybody thinks Casey is going to be the one to do it.

“I know, I know. Thanks, Izzie.”

Things get back to normal after that.

Casey sits back with the team again and laughs along with the girl’s jokes and listens to their stories: like how Piper had a holiday romance with some guy in Aspen and how Marie’s ex-boyfriend at their neighbouring private school won’t stop harassing her. But she feels disconnected even with Izzie there. It’s getting harder and harder for Casey to be around Izzie without thinking about that night and what it means.

She and Evan had issues before Izzie. Izzie wasn’t necessarily one of them, but she felt like something between her and Evan. Almost like a barrier. Evan had said it himself that Casey was different around her Clayton friends and that she’d been changed by it. But he hadn’t understood that Clayton was what was best for her in terms of her chance at being professional. And it was fine. Evan lived a town over, anyway, and went to one of the downhill schools.

Casey felt at home at Clayton with her team, though. She’d worked fucking hard for that scholarship and boyfriend or no boyfriend, she wasn’t going to give up on her goal. Evan had done everything right with her but he just hadn’t understood the world she was in now.

But with Izzie…she feels like a friend who she’d known her whole life. Izzie was vibrant and alive and blunt; which Casey wasn’t used to. She made Casey more carefree and less tight-knit. She brought out some good traits in her which Casey would’ve longed to have before. Also there was like an unspoken connection between them where they could detect their feelings without saying them. They could trust each other with their problems and secrets without worry in a different way than they could with their respective boyfriends.

Sure it could’ve been a really strong platonic bond, but if that were true, why did Casey feel sparks when she held Izzie’s hand? And why the hell did they almost kiss in her room whilst she was still dating Evan? Casey would _never_ be that person because of what her mom did. Although she almost was…

She still avoids hanging out with Izzie one on one. She makes up believable excuses about looking out for Sam and helping him prep for college, or just general family stuff. Izzie is busy enough that she doesn’t ask many questions about it, which Casey is thankful for.

But then Izzie comes over unexpectedly on a Friday night. Her parents and Sam are at a college event type thing and left Casey home alone.

Casey figures she can just binge watch some Netflix with the pizza she ordered and not be disturbed. Apparently not.

She answers the door and her eyes widen in surprise when she sees its Izzie.

“Izzie, hey. What are you doing here?”

Izzie’s holding a brown paper bag with some groceries. “We are hanging out tonight,” she declares, walking into the house to the kitchen.

“Ok,” Casey agrees, because what else can she say?

Izzie sets up their food, stealing a slice from Casey’s pizza. They’re watching a bad romantic comedy between pizza and swigs of some cheap vodka.

“This movie is so fucking bad,” Izzie says halfway through the movie.

Casey laughs. She’s not wrong. “It fucking is,” she agrees.

“Do you ever just think about that…like how all romantic comedies have basically the same repetitive plot with the same two dimensional characters?”

Casey snorts. Izzie is such a little nerd sometimes. But it’s cute. “Not really. I don’t have that much time on my hands.”

Izzie whacks her shoulder from across the couch. “Fuck you, Newton! I’m just a deep thinker.”

Casey gives her a sceptical look, because Izzie is simple and upfront. “You keep telling yourself that, Iz.”

Izzie glares. She takes another pizza slice. “No but seriously, these characters are so basic. It’s always the same stories: enemies to lovers, childhood friends to lovers, whatever.”

Casey knows she’s right. Every film they’ve watched contains the same recipe for romance. Frankly, she finds these types of films mind numbingly boring, but apparently Izzie likes them, so she watches them with minimal complaints.

“So?”

“So these films need something better,” Izzie says. “I mean, haven’t you ever thought about these so-called epic love stories and thought they’re not so epic?”

Casey nods. “Yeah. All these chick-flick movies are garbage to me.”

Izzie rolls her eyes. “What about instead of just the same boy and girl falling in love they do something different? Like a man and a man falling in love, or a girl and a girl?”

Casey shifts on the couch. The subject feels uncomfortable for some reason, a reason she knows all too well.

“There’s a few of those,” Casey says, “But not enough.”

Izzie grunts in response, pausing for thought. “I mean…why not? Like, is it so wrong for two people of the same gender to fall in love?” Izzie looks directly at Casey now, and Casey feels like she can’t breathe.

It doesn’t feel like they are talking generally now. Something in Izzie’s voice – something akin to longing or hope – shows that their conversation is personal. She’s no longer talking about fictional movie characters or stupid fake love stories, but about real life. Possibly about _them_.

“N-no.” Casey stutters over the word, feeling more on edge than ever. She’s not like Izzie. She just can’t express her feelings so openly. Within their family secrets had always been a given and when her dad left and when her mom had the affair, she learnt that it was best to keep your feelings locked up, so that way nobody else could hurt you.

But Izzie challenged that idea. Izzie made Casey believe that people could have good intentions and could care without boundaries. After all, Izzie had bared herself to Casey that day in the principal’s office, leaving not much out. She’d trusted her with herself.

Now with Izzie sitting in front of her, bright eyes shining with hope, Casey feels more ready. It feels like if she tells Izzie there is a chance Izzie feels the same and if she doesn’t, she’d be cool with being friends.

“Exactly,” Izzie whispers with a soft smile, “There’s nothing wrong with that.”

Suddenly she feels closer. Because fuck, she is. Izzie scoots closer to Casey without subtlety.

Casey sighs.

“Newton?”

“Yeah.”

She looks at Izzie now. Really seeing her. It sounds fucking cheesy but it feels like she’s seeing her for the first time. The true vulnerable Izzie. They’d been around each other in those moments, but rarely had they been so open with each other about their personal feelings, not since that night when they’d almost kissed, at least.

“You’re the right thing,” she says.

Casey blinks. “Huh?”

“You’re what’s _so right_ to me,” the girl tells her. “It wasn’t with Nate. But it is with you.”

Casey shudders. Fuck. Izzie had just confessed to her. She should kiss her, pull her close or just say something. She opens her mouth to say the words, but nothing comes out.

Izzie’s smile drops and morphs into a sad one. “It’s ok. I know that you’re in love with Evan. I just had to say that. I’m sorry if I made you uncomfortable, I should go.” She gets up hurriedly to leave, but Casey impulsively grabs her wrist.

“No,” she says harshly. Izzie looks surprised, and Casey softens. “Please. I have to explain.”

She sits down wordlessly. Casey tells her about Evan and about the fuckery of the past few weeks and about Edison’s top hat.

“So that’s why I was avoiding you…because…well, I like you, Iz.” Casey takes a deep breath. She finally said it and admitted to herself. After weeks of keeping it inside, it was out there.

Izzie’s eyes widen and then she breaks into a relieved smile. “You – you do?”

Casey nods vigorously. “Yeah! So damn much. I kept it inside for weeks and I just couldn’t tell you. I didn’t want to ruin things between us, but now you…” Casey trails off. _Now you feel the same way._

“Mhmm.” They say nothing for a moment. They gaze at each other. Suddenly talking doesn’t seem so interesting as Casey finds her eyes drawn to the pink of Izzie’s lips. For what feels like an eternity, they sit on the plush couch just being.

It feels like minutes have ticked by, but soon they can’t stand it and their lips are pressed together. Casey can’t recall who moves first but all she knows is this is how its supposed to be. The butterflies swim rapidly in her belly and her heart can’t stop hammering. She can’t stop touching Izzie’s hair and can’t be away from her lips for even a second. They both hum with the feeling and Casey registers they’re fucking making out on her living room couch.

Neither girls seem to care though, as when Izzie deepens the kiss, Casey follows her lead, kissing her back until she’s out of breath and her lips feel tingly and numb.

They pull away eventually and press their foreheads together.

The unspoken promise is there: _I won’t leave you._

Just like that night in Casey’s room, she feels herself again.

 

 

 

 

 

 


End file.
